


Release

by Wecanhaveallthree



Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 10:37:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21269663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wecanhaveallthree/pseuds/Wecanhaveallthree
Summary: Years after the ashes of the Badab War have cooled, the Red Corsairs still pay a bloody tithe for their betrayal.





	Release

All is still.

It is a painful, fragile stasis. Every atom of being protests. To live is to move; to be still is to die.

All dissolves in this twilight of anticipation.

He has existed here forever, without birth or death. There is a world outside of it, a place so wondrous and terrible that it can only be an illusion, a conjuring by some deceitful power to draw him from this void of being.

There are imperatives that demand his action. Lungs burn for wont of breath. Blood pools in extremities. Primitive needs for battle or retreat ring panicked bells in his consciousness.

Every element of the universe works to force him into motion.

He is not yet ready.

The void is cool and calm and splendid. It stretches away to every horizon, flawless and true under a sky that has no shape or colour. The illusions beyond are nothing but layers of restraint upon the freedom of his being. To open his eyes is to acknowledge their power upon him, to submit to law. It is to place fetters of hard truth upon the delight that is existence.

Here, he may feel the cool air upon his cheek, the gentleness of the _hari_ grass against his fingertips. Here, also, he may find what he needs to impart his delight upon the illusions that crowd in upon him.

He draws a rusted blade from the tall stalks. It is the green of temple gates, the used brown of practice mats. His hand closes upon the hilt, as the first chain falls upon his body: the Ninety-Nine Forms.

He draws a feather from the wind. It is the imposition of one’s freedom upon another: it is the shackle of individuality. To be apart: Kurana.

He plucks a rose from the emptiness. The petals are blackened by soot, stiff and crimson with blood. The eye at the centre is a crazed thing, rolling and mad, and he crushes it in one hand. The vitae stains his hand even as it sloughs away, drawing him from the void. It is the bridge between. It is the binding of one world to the other: from the world of freedom to the world of illusions.

He opens his eyes. Warm and deep as emeralds, surrounded by the lines of a life well-lived, cracked and chasmed with mirth and sorrow, for the world of illusions gives both in abundance.

Other senses are alight also, almost newborn in their giddy report. The smell of ripened fruit lounging on heavy vines, the nectar rich and deep. The fever warmth of jungle air, a frenetic prickling on his skin as the great biorhythms move in concert to maintain a harmonious temperature. The soft passage of droplets making their way through the boughs, stragglers of the last seasonal storm.

These things are real. They assert themselves, proud and strong, all part of a greater system. They turn in conjunction. Each feeds the others. An eternal motion; the orchestra of life.

By contrast, the illusions are barely there, dark stains that obscure the truth. Irritants, nothing more. Weeds in the garden.

_Chandrahas_ leaves its sheath faster than even a superhuman eye can follow. It is a dragonfly operating in unison with the sister-blade, _Surpanakha_. It turns, soars joyfully towards the light--

The first Red Corsair never suspects the cut that bisects him, catching his twin hearts mid-beat, full and lusty with life. He dies unknowing, his thoughts unfinished, his thread unspun. He is, then he is not.

His squad responds with commendable speed, but the world is moving faster than they. Anticipation has become realisation.

Some of them are old and bloodied enough to recognise their slayer’s markings, even to remember the time whereupon that sudden strike would have been upon their shared foes. The pitted, mottled carapace like some ancient insect revealed from amber, spreading its wings for flight denied it for a million years. The black claw upon the pauldron’s yellow-green field, no more aggressive or posturing than a noble reaching for their next cup of wine.

The next to die does not fumble their parry. It is a classic, proper form, indoctrinated into aspirants since the Crusade was young. It is the perfect technique to glance a foe’s blade and to make space.

_Surpanakha_ passes through the short gladius without changing path, opening the Corsair’s body lengthways. How could an illusion stop it, after all? Dead iron wielded by dead men in service of dead gods: they are insubstantial as mist. They have no power here.

A dazzling series of dual strokes forces back the remaining three members of the patrol. Each is a fearsome warrior in their own right, each has faced Space Marines throughout the Badab War, fought beside them, killed them, in a reflection of the long-ago Heresy writ again by the Tyrant’s ambitious hand.

But he is no Horus. And they are no Palatine Blades, no Sanakht.

They are soldiers, not swordsmen.

The fizzing _Chandrahas_ slips a guard and disembowels a veteran of a hundred campaigns, flowing into a position that prevents the other Corsairs coming to his aid while _Surpanakha_ finishes the movement with a flourish that is no more rushed or urgent than a gardener tending to roses. A welter of blood and a helmet marred by the eight-sided star drops to the tender earth.

Those that remain endure, side-by-side. They know each other well: they have fought from this position more than they would care to admit. Even the brutal dictates of the Archenemy understand brotherhood, and if not that, then grim necessity.

Each covers the other’s weaknesses. They fend their attacker; they regain three steps of ground, but -- they know -- nothing that is not given to them.

He starts to laugh as he melds from movement to movement, from each chapter of the Ninety-Nine Forms. Strike, reverse strike, _madia_, the closing of the gate, _torbata_ \-- the humour pours from him like a jug of grape-spirit, full-bodied and warm. He has come from torpor to being more blur than man, his blood quickening with every attack, his stances opening like a flower welcoming the sun.

The two worlds become one. Every chain, broken.

There is no subterfuge to his advance. He breaks upon them like a wave, a flurry of barely-caught blows, then recedes to encourage a returned assault.

How long do the trio grapple in this manner, boots stamping down on the forest floor, sparks drooling from blades? Time has ceased to mean aught, as the worlds merge. The jungle becomes a grassy, endless realm. The cries of animals become the wind, become plainsong.

It cannot last.

The left Corsair steps badly and passes from the world, _Chandrahas_ through his gorget. He vanishes from sight, below the long _hari_ grass.

His companion seamlessly takes up his fallen defender’s weapon. Now a quartet of swords dances to an infinite audience. Every face is the land is raised to the battle. The stalks hush their applause; the storm clouds thunder their approval, the rain whispers down in adulation.

Each drop that falls upon the illusion secures it firmer in reality. Behind the horned mask, behind the burning eyes, behind the scars and runes -- they are washed away in the deluge of truth -- there is a sincere young man, uplifted from the Maelstrom worlds that he was born upon. There are the oaths he upholds in his twisted way, of protection and surety for these hardy humans on their empire’s fringes.

There was a goodness there, before the Blackheart’s lies. And no lie can survive the passing of blades.

Upon the endless field, the rain is simply rain. In the world of illusions, it is the unbreakable edge of _Chandrahas_. In the world of reality, the rain washes away grime and blood. In its shadowy companion, the relic-blade cuts away layers of ceramite.

The first gladius spins away, shattered. The second drops from a broken wrist.

In the world of illusions, the daemonic visage snarls. “Do it, crawler to the Corpse Throne.”

In the world of reality, a young, unscarred face smiles. “Forgive me, brother.”

Kurana smiles back, and the rainbow of dancing blades frees his foeman’s soul.

“There is nothing to forgive.”

He shakes the clotting blood from his weapons, a short burst from the power-fields ensuring the last traces are erased.

Soon, another group of Corsairs will be sent after their missing companions.

Until then, Kurana reposes himself within a hollowed tree-copse and closes his eyes.

His breathing slows.

All is still once more.


End file.
